The Princess and the Mani Stones
In Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, locals worship not gods or gurus but a princess who was credited for laying the cornerstone of Tibetan Buddhism, the chief religion of the region.
In Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, locals worship not gods or gurus but a princess who was credited for laying the cornerstone of Tibetan Buddhism, the chief religion of the region.
“I always wanted to come to Yushu. It’s our duty to walk this road at least once,” a Tibetan man explained in Mandarin. Jyekundo is the native name of the town Yushu in the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a vast area of southwest Qinghai province comprised of expansive grasslands and snow-capped peaks perched some 3,680 metres above sea level. Overhead, hungry eagles circle. Noticing my ominous glances to the heavens, he told me smilingly, “When we die, we leave our bodies on the hillside to be eaten by the birds. We wouldn’t want to remain in one place like a grave.” Approximately half the Tibetan massif ’s inhabitants are nomadic, and I concluded that even in death, the nomadic spirit is retained.
Life on a storm-swept tableland where frostbite and sunburn can occur simultaneously has shaped the Tibetans in body and mind. The people are strong and stoic and see everything from pebbles in streams to lofty mountaintops as holy.
At 7.49am on the 14th of April 2010, almost 3,000 people lost their lives while a further 12,000 were injured when a magnitude 7.1 quake rocked Yushu. Hundreds of traditional Tibetan homes were flattened. As a reminder of this devastation, the wreckage of a hotel built just months prior to the earthquake has been propped-up with metal buttresses while a stone clock, sculpted to appear cracked and broken, recalls the time and date of the disaster.
Like a phoenix, Yushu has risen from the ashes in the years after the disaster. It has no doubt been rebuilt with Chinese money and manpower, but it is imbued with Tibetan soul as a statue of the legendary King Gesar overlooking colourful Kham stone houses expresses. The Yushu Earthquake Memorial site is spookily quiet. Apparently, the Tibetans, schooled in the fragility of life, don’t dwell on the irreversible. And this attitude that life has to go on is apparent from the sight at the edge of town: locals dressed in colourful costumes congregate at one of Yushu’s scared sites, the Jiana Mani Stone Mound.
‘Mani’ refers to stones engraved with Buddhist mantras that are seen as sacred prayer aids. The faithful chant ‘om mani padme hum’ as they circle the world’s largest mani heap, spinning prayer wheels and prostrating themselves on the ground as a gesture of veneration. Other more casual adherents escort children, elderly and the occasional cow around what, to the unknowing eye, appears to be a consecrated pile of bricks.
Buddhism never truly supplanted the animistic traditions of the plateau people; it merged with them to forge the unique tapestry of spiritual expression we see today.
Stone worship can be traced back to over a millennium ago when native shamanistic beliefs and rituals
sometimes lumped together under the umbrella term Bon — were prevalent as Tibetan scholar Sam Van Schaik puts it: Tibetans have always lived in a world swarming with spirits, demons and minor deities… There were the spirits of the mountains, rivers and lakes. Buddhism never truly supplanted the animistic traditions of the plateau people; it merged with them to forge the unique tapestry of spiritual expression we see today.
According to local lore, a Buddhist master named Jiana built a small mani stone pile at this location some three centuries ago. Since then, locals have maintained the practice with devoted artisans adding mantra-engraved stones to the pile daily. It is estimated that there are 200 million mani stones here though nobody can be sure.
Following the pilgrims on their clockwise tour of the temple mound, I met a rock carver named Dorje who is selling his mani stones.
“I’ve been here ten years. I carve stones and sell them to pilgrims who add them to the pile. People come from many miles away,” he told me. Some Tibetans travel here over days or even weeks. I asked him how long he planned to continue carving rocks.
“For the rest of this life,” he said, expressing another deeply held Tibetan belief: reincarnation.
Tibetan animistic practises are, perhaps, the logical worldview of an isolated people bedevilled by extreme weather events, landslides and earthquakes before the holy Dalai Lamas, when governance was left to the tsenpo, the earliest of which were considered gods among men.
By 7 AD, the tsenpo lost their divine status, and like most medieval rulers, sourced their
power on the battlefield. One notable tsenpo is Songsten Gampo who ascended the throne when China was unified under the Tang dynasty. After centuries of tumult, the city of Chang’an (modern day Xi’an) was once again the beating heart of a thriving empire, a cosmopolitan capital informed with all manner of Silk Road exoticism including Turkish dress and temples revering the Indian sage Siddhartha Gautama, known to the West as Buddha.
The second Tang emperor Taizong had little knowledge or respect for the emerging Tibetan empire and twice disallowed a Chinese princess and the “barbarian” Songsten to wed. He changed his mind after bloody skirmishes on the Chinese frontier in 638 AD convinced him of the need for a marriage alliance. In 640 AD, his niece, Princess Wencheng, was granted to Songsten Gampo in a union that is commemorated in Yushu to this day. Tibetans credit her for introducing Buddhism to Tibet. She brought a Buddha statue to Tibet, and it’s still housed in Lhasa’s Jokang Monastery. She is considered by the Tibetans to be a physical manifestation of the bodhisattva Tara and as holy as Mother Mary is to Catholics.
20 kilometres south of Yushu Town, Princess Wencheng Temple was built to honour her in the Princess Wencheng Scenic Area — a valley pass believed to be the route the princess took while en route to Lhasa — is decorated with more prayer flags than one might imagine possible.
A mandarin-speaking lama in the Wencheng Temple explained that when Songsten Gampo travelled to Lhasa with Princess Wencheng, they stopped here for a month and taught the locals any things. The footprints she left on a rock there quickly became an object of worship, and it was another Chinese princess named Jincheng, who also passed through the Leba Ravine, who built this temple built to honour Princess Wencheng.
She is considered by the Tibetans to be a physical manifestation of the bodhisattva Tara and as holy as Mother Mary is to Catholics.
Every Tibetan New Year, devotees perform kora — a practice that combines meditation and pilgrimage and requires the practitioner to circumambulate the temple dedicated to the divine princess.
The bald young monk went on to tell me I was fortunate to visit the area in quiet times. “During Tibetan New Year, so many pilgrims visit that the entire valley turns into a city,” he explains. Every Tibetan New Year, devotees perform kora — a practice that combines meditation and pilgrimage and requires the practitioner to circumambulate the temple dedicated to the divine princess.
Every rock and cliff face in Leba Ravine bears mantras. Our driver told us those were mountain mani that not only commemorate Princess Wencheng’s passage but also bless passers-by with good fortune. At the riverside where we stopped to wash our hands and faces, we saw a Tibetan artisan quietly chipping away at some rocks. We have no means to communicate but with a smile, an expression Tibetans mastered long ago.
An internal gear change can happen in such circumstances, with your face shimmering before you in waters unpolluted by the industry of man. The world below the plateau is turning but it feels unimportant.
I sat beside this Tibetan craftsman and watched him meticulously carving text I cannot read into stones. “A thousand-year-old tradition,” I write in my notebook, “which felt strangely contemporary.” Thomas Bird is a Beijing-based writer who has contributed to several guidebooks including
The Rough Guide To China, SCMP and The Guardian. He likes train travel, craft beer and the teachings of Zhuangzi.